


In Moonland

by dire18



Category: Castlevania (Cartoon), 悪魔城ドラキュラ | Castlevania Series
Genre: Action/Adventure, Angst, Body Horror, Canon-Typical Violence, Horror, Post-Season/Series 02
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-02-19
Updated: 2019-03-05
Packaged: 2019-10-31 08:26:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,441
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17845874
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dire18/pseuds/dire18
Summary: In the wake of war, some breaks get repaired while others only get endured.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> please accept this token of my anger over the season 2 finale.

It was a brisk autumn night and the moon stood tall in zenith of the sky. Luminous rays spilled through a fast-moving current of wispy clouds, dappling the vast castle, formerly of Dracula, now of Alucard, in a shifting mottle of light as it stood sentinel over the Belmont family ruins. At peak brightness, the floating towers and sleek spires seemed to glow of their own accord, ephemeral, beautiful, but cold and remote in their solitude.

There was much about the castle that felt cold these days. The sun had grown fleeting and the wind was gaining in teeth as it howled down from the surrounding mountains. Trees were beginning to shed their glorious autumn coats, trading vibrant clusters of red and gold for barren, wan branches. Frost glistened along the windows and the tips of overgrown meadow grasses in the dawn. Everywhere around the castle, the world was beginning to yield to an end of fall. Yet to Adrian Tepes, perched in the lofty tower chamber he had designated as a study, winter had long since come early.

The dhampir sighed and carefully closed shut a book laid on the wooden desk before him. He was aggravated, but remained mindful to not take his frustration out on the fragile old tome. Time had weathered the pages to a sepia hue, delicate enough to tear along the slightest errant crease. 

The book’s earliest chapters dated back generations. They served as a starting point for the Belmont family’s accumulated knowledge on the factions of vampire nobility scattered across Wallachia. Lifetimes spent meticulously documenting every available scrap of verified news, firsthand account, and underground rumor had produced an encyclopedic view of vampiric history through the hunters’ eyes, more thorough than any Adrian had seen written by actual vampires. He wouldn’t want to inadvertently damage such an invaluable source of knowledge, especially not one covering a topic that was becoming a growing concern on his mind. And besides even that, the book had been entrusted to him for safekeeping.

It’s just that he was having a hard time focusing tonight, even on something he should consider to be of interest. He pinched the bridge of his nose, a very human habit of exasperation picked up from his mother. For what seemed like the dozenth time that hour he found his gaze trailing out the window, past the somber view of his own reflection, to the remains of castle Belmont, the hold, and the forest beyond.

Adrian had excellent senses. Especially at night. There wasn’t a beating mammalian heart within leagues. All the local animals had fled the forest without return after Dracula’s fortress had come to settle on its edge. It was as though they had sensed something insidious leaking out from the stones of the place, something that rendered the entire woodland tainted and unlivable. Only the birds and fish and insects remained since the exodus, creatures of need and thought too simple to be troubled by even the war machine’s malevolence. Aside from these tiny souls, the dhampir was completely alone.

After a moment’s consideration he pushed the chair back from the desk and stood, suddenly impatient and claustrophobic in the small study. Perhaps a walk would help focus his mind enough that he could do something productive before morning arrived. And it would at least be a change from watching and brooding over the crater and the ruins.

He took a spiral staircase down, his boots clicking loudly against cobblestone steps that replaced the humble wooden fixtures of his office’s floor. The sound tumbled through gloom to echo faintly far below. There were no windows in the stairwell to permit in the moonlight. Electric sconces wired at the entry of each floor stood without spark. Adrian descended into a blackness that would have blinded his human half, his vampire side barely heeding the palpable dark.

It had been seven months since the fall of Dracula. To the nation of Wallachia at large, that meant seven months of daring to settle into an uneasy peace in the wake of armed conflict. Desperate, dangerous fragments of the night horde still plagued the country’s more rural areas, but elsewhere the cities were consolidating and rebuilding. The gathered human strength was enough defend against all but the most formidable of demonic stragglers. Granted, there were also the rumors bubbling out from various corners of the nation. Unsettling ones hinting at a threat stewing in the desert wastelands far to the east, or the rising body count of new alliances and fresh enmity among the vampire clans. The shadows the rumors cast were long enough to have reached even the dhampir in his tower. But for the average soul in Wallachia, it had meant a collective exhale of relief, and a return to the mundane toil and repair of life after war.

For Adrian, it had meant seven long months of constantly noticing how _quiet_ it was, here in the now empty house of his father, as he spent his days in sleep and his nights in restlessness, sending familiars to solicit news of the present and sounding the depths of the two libraries for knowledge from the past. Seven months mourning the parents he had buried in his heart, their actual bodies lost as ash and dust. Seven months of staring out the damn window in the tower study, chosen for its good vantage of the Belmont hold and a nearby overgrown, dilapidated wagon trail that lead out from the forest. Seven months of telling himself it didn’t matter if he never saw that trail in use again, and seven months of watching it anyway.

The staircase ended on a floor with sweeping arched windows that stretched meters over his head, up into the ornate rafters of a high ceiling. A vast grandfather clock loomed against a far wall, announcing each second's passing in a steady tick. The electric lanterns here were as dormant as those in the stairwell, the fireplace cold and unlit. In the cool autumn night, the glass radiated an ice-like chill as Adrian drifted through the cavernous room. The sound of the clock followed him as he passed, underscoring the silence around him otherwise. It was a place suited only for vampires and their ghosts. It could have been a tomb.

The comparison should have given him a measure of peace. It was what he wanted through all the strife leading up to the final confrontation with his father: A return to the catacombs beneath Gresit, where he could spend out the rest of his life in somber hibernation. He would contemplate the loss of his parents, keeping himself distanced from the hateful machinations of his father’s people, remaining mercifully unpestered by the arrogant, uncouth, sheer _obnoxiousness_ of certain individuals among his mother’s. From the moment he set foot out of the vault, it had always been his objective to return to it.

Only, for some reason, the regained solitude hadn’t brought Adrian much closure in the half-year since the war. Assuming he survived the encounter, the dhampir had always expected to feel a sense of finality in the wake of his father’s death. A disconnect from the earthly world that would sever his final ties to humanity and the last of his humanity along with it. Instead, to his surprise, Adrian felt more human than ever. The days lacked color and passed slowly. Hours were chores to be endured. He had once spent a year alone underground in a stone box, unphased by the slow crawl of time, finding solace in the soothing dark. Yet now, on the other side of the war, it had become a struggle to resign himself to the solitude he had once found so soothing.

Adrian continued to wander through the castle, his aimless tread stirring up a film of dust that had settled over the stone floors. The specks wafted into the still air around him. Gossamer spiderwebs glinted from their corners and in the nooks of statues, bright strands of silk in the moonlight. Like the lanterns and fireplaces, tidiness had become an area of indifference. Even Dracula’s infamous traveling fortress with all its mysterious halls and basement war machines was no less defensible against such tiny enemies as dust and moths when left to neglect.

At first, for a while, the dhampir had made a routine of keeping the castle habitable. Even as the only person within its labyrinthine halls, and one who didn’t particularly require it at that, every night for weeks Alucard had kept the power on and the hearths warm. A bright glow spilled from sconces both inside and aligned on the outer walls, making the castle a visible beacon on even the stormiest of nights. He had told himself it was simply a habit born from travel with the two humans. That he had grown accustomed to the pair’s need for light in dim places during his time with them, and had come to expect it himself even without the necessity. It had taken him a little longer to admit to himself that the routine continued from a place of hopeful anticipation. That every night Adrian was lighting the lanterns and getting the great hall warm just to make sure he always had the proverbial welcome mat rolled out, just in case it was needed. But as the months marched on and the humans never returned, Alucard had grown increasingly inconsistent at the practice, with first days and then weeks elapsing at a time between occurrences, until at last the routine lighting of the castle was abandoned altogether.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1 kudos and i'll write a second part with more semblance of a plot than Alucard moping on a stairway


	2. Chapter 2

The crows were the spell’s first warning. 

Alucard had just reached the main terrace outside the marble halls. In another life, the balcony had been among his favorite places in the castle. It was one of the rare spots where his father’s penchant for crimson and pewter manifested as elegant instead of foreboding. Graceful stained glass walls in sunset shades framed a balcony built of polished white marble that used to dazzle in the sun, ruby reflections dancing along the pale stone. A small table with a trio of chairs still stood in one corner, a relic from happier times. His parents used to sit there often, his mother pouring over her notes or the latest science tome, his father grilling him over his academic lessons. As a child he had been able to hear their voices from that spot on the balcony if his bedroom window was left open, the sound of heated debates and merry laughter echoing late into many nights. 

Now the beautiful red glass was shattered into a thousand jagged fragments. Whether a casualty of Alucard’s efforts to retake the castle or the coup staged by his father’s own generals, the dhampir was uncertain which. The marble was dull and gritty, the laughter long since silenced. Alucard ran a hand along the table’s surface, inspecting the layer of grime that came away on the tips of his fingers, whisking it away until it disintegrated in the late autumn wind. 

He looked up at a sudden cacophony in the forest. The night’s quiet was shattered as scores of crows erupted from their roosts among the trees and the rubble of the Belmont estate, scattering to the sky. Screeching, indignant caws and the sound of many beating wings thrumming loudly in the dhampir’s ears. They poured from their nests in a swarm, furious, startled. 

Alucard went to the edge of the balcony, gripping the stone rail. He watched through narrowed eyes as the flock disappeared into the black. 

There had been a hole left in the local ecology when the mammals fled the castle’s arrival. The crows had filled it. The birds had grown large and multiplied quickly in the absence of predators, taking over the woods and Belmont castle ruins alike for their nests. They were the rulers of the forest. With their strength of numbers, even a hunting owl wouldn’t be enough to spook them from their roost after dark. And Alucard was aware of very little else besides owls or hawks that would be left in woods these days to threaten the scavenger flock. 

He found himself holding his breath as he watched the forest. Something was out there. Or was on its way. And his sword was several stories away, out of summoning reach. Wind stirred the long strands of his hair about his face. Shadows shifted in the yard as clouds hurried across the moon. The last of the great birds had gone and the rustling of the disturbed branches had fallen back to their usual, whispering murmur. For a heartbeat more, there was nothing. Then the gathering spell broke. 

Had his eyes been merely human, it’s likely Alucard would have overlooked the sudden streak of violet lightning that flashed on the far side of the toppled estate. It was there and gone in an instant, with an accompanying clatter of thunder that lingered in the ear for far longer. But the dhampir wouldn’t have needed to see the flash to know where to go. The spell had used a catastrophic amount of power. It burned right through all the considerable natural energy of the area and left a void in the ether that any creature with magic affinity could sense, like a sinkhole rendered in the world. 

Alucard was in wolf form and scaling down the castle walls before the sound of the explosion ceased ringing in his skull. The great white beast picked up speed quickly as it leaped and skittered down the slanted spires and clock towers of Castlevania, levitating as needed and free-falling where dared, until Alucard hit the ground with a _wuph!_ and set course for the far side of the Belmont ruins. 

The wolf was fast. It tore through the yard and past the crater, and even the great flock of crows may have shown respect for the bared pearlescent fangs. They were unnaturally long for a wolf, just as the dhampir’s were too long for a human in his usual form. In all incarnations, Alucard’s vampire nature refused to be suppressed. Breath panted in crystalline puffs from a mouth as red as blood, frosting on the chilly autumn air. Claws gouged a trail through the loamy earth, dwarfing the print of any normal wolf. 

As it ran the animal remained acutely on guard. Alucard’s wariness could be seen in the bristling raised hackles between the wolf’s shoulders. There was a pungent smell saturating the area, carbon and sulfur, remnants of the spell’s explosive backlash that stung the beast’s sensitive nose and dulled its senses. 

It was not a reassuring sign. The castle had been left in solitude by friend and foe alike since its arrival on the Belmont ruins. Perhaps arrogantly, Alucard had assumed any attack would amount to no worse than a nuisance. Roving gravediggers or small-time demons, perhaps a half-hearted angry throng of humans, something measly of that sort. The humans were still too busy with rebuilding efforts to form a proper lynch mob, and anything tougher of a demonic nature would be too smart to challenge Dracula’s son in the first place. 

So it was alarming that contrary to all his expectations, the first trouble to arrive at the dhampir’s door came in the form of magic powerful enough to blast a hole clean through the ether. 

Furthermore, and somewhat humbling, Alucard was not a well-studied magician. The dhampir had spent relatively little time pursuing the craft despite the natural affinity for it. Not when there was biology or engineering available to dig into alongside his mother and father, whose passion for the topics had been contagious. Alucard had mastered his inherent talents, vampiric spell-work such as shapeshifting and shadow-walking, but had neglected most formal lessons beyond that. 

That was about to be to his detriment now. Different types of magic had their own telltale signs that indicated one elemental source from another. The color of energy in a spell’s manifestation was one such marker. Alucard had recognized that flash of purple instantly when it lit up the ruins. Violet energy was the herald of temporal magic, the rare art of time and spatial manipulation. A type of advanced spell-work of which the dhampir had scant familiarity, and absolutely no firsthand experience in combating. 

Not for the first time since the war, he found himself regretting Sypha Belnades’ absence. The Speaker would have had insight into the mechanics and limitations of temporal magic he could use to arm himself. She may have even known what manner of spell would drain the mana in an area like that. The depths of her knowledge had been an invaluable resource when they traveled together. 

As it was, Alucard was going in mostly blind, aware only that the spell had been a powerful one, and that he was quickly approaching ground zero. The wolf was tough, but the wolf was alone. In the war against his father, the dhampir had faced his enemies with magic and the deadly steel of the Morning Star guarding his back. Alucard was acutely aware that he was now without either. Also not for the first time since the war. 

The wolf had almost reached the far side of the ruins when the stench of rot hit. The sulfur and carbon of burned mana was finally subsiding as the hole in the ether began to stitch itself back together. On its heels came a smell of decomposing flesh strong to make Alucard gag. It was reminiscent of a mass grave he had once located in a small provincial sewer system. A local gang had been stashing the bodies of their victims in a shallow channel for weeks. Time and the damp environment had bred conditions so rancid that the city’s entire water supply had grown tainted with runoff from the decomposition. Alucard had never encountered something quite so uniquely horrible as that smell of wet decay until now. If only there was enough mana in the area, he might have shifted out of the faster wolf form with its heightened senses just to escape it, even without his sword. 

He slowed as he rounded the spilling corner of rubble that had once been a tower of the Belmont estate, still fighting to ignore that pervasive stench of decay, and arrived in view of the impact site at last. 

The spell had definitely been a powerful one. Scorched grass stood in a perfectly circular ring around a shallow crater blasted into the earth. It was still smoldering in places, cinders and smoke trails drifting into the air above. Something large thrashed in the center of the crater, kicking up more embers as it scrabbled about the razed earth. 

It may have been a wyvern, once. Alucard recognized the long serpentine neck and bipedal body, the broad wings and rows of vicious-looking horns that curved from the reptilian head. But it wasn’t one now. The monster’s body was bloated around its skeletal frame, like a corpse saturated with water. Gangrenous ooze leaked from tears that split through graying scales and exposed the distended flesh beneath. Mushrooms had taken root in the open wounds, sprouting into broad, milky caps that sent their feet deep into the wyvern’s engorged body. Other fungi and insects grew in patches across exposed bone or wriggled among the putrid scales. No wonder it reminded him of the grave in the sewer; the thing was decomposing where it stood. 

The monster’s back was to him. A tail, mostly reduced to bare skeleton save for a few chunks of meat wedged among the vertebrae, lashed to and fro as the wyvern fought to stand upright. It propped itself up on the elbows of its wings only to lurch forward and crash to the ground once more. Other than the impact of its body and the scrape of its talons against the stones of the earth, the monster didn’t make a sound. It seemed to be dead. Not like the reanimated denizens of the Devil Forge, but _dead_. The wyvern looked and moved like a corpse being jerked about on a mannequin’s string. Its movements were sluggish, disjointed, as though the body were being forced into contortions by some external power. 

It was baffling. The spell must have been teleportation magic, a means of ambush, but to what end? A reanimated wyvern could be formidable but this one wasn’t even acknowledging the wolf creeping closer to the ring of smoldering grass. Such a use of power, all to drop a single confused enemy on the lawn? Was this really intended as an assault on the infamous Demon Castle of Dracula? 

The monster continued to thrash, swiping out with one powerful leg in a strike that looked deliberately aimed, and Alucard realized he was wrong. The wyvern wasn’t blindly convulsing. It was lashing out at something across from itself in the crater, something he couldn’t see. 

The wolf crouched low in the singed grass as it stalked around the monster to catch a glimpse of the new threat…and halted to see a haggard figure clad in red and gold and covered in mud struggling to its feet before the monster. The defiant sneer on the scarred face. The silver shine of a chain whip as it glinted in the man’s hand. 

Belmont. 

Alucard, stunned, stared as the man dodged a snap from the wyvern’s jaws. Too late he realized it wasn’t only the monster that was acting sluggish. The human was moving sloppily as well, his unarmed hand balled in a fist and pressed against his side as he fought to maintain balance. The man avoided the wyvern’s teeth as he stumbled backwards but failed to see the creature’s tail sweeping in from the other direction at his unprotected back.

The wolf snarled a warning, leaping forward to cross the distance with unearthly vampire speed, but not before the wyvern dealt its blow. The tail hit Belmont in the back with crushing force, throwing the hunter off his feet and to the ground where he lay, unmoving. 

The wyvern’s head snaked forward again, seeking to make its kill. Its shadow cast long across the Hunter’s still body as it approached, but this time Alucard got there first.

He didn’t teleport. He would lose too much momentum that way. The wolf collided into the monster’s side at a sprint, bowling it off its feet and away from the Hunter. Scales parted beneath the wolf’s claws as easily as wet paper, leaving the white fur stained in a thick brackish liquid that gushed from the wounds. His stomach roiled at the contact. Alucard scrabbled away from the creature and back into a defensive stance. 

The wyvern meanwhile had landed heavily and seemed to be having trouble regaining its balance. It thrashed about, the rough contact smashing the delicate mushrooms growing from its skin. Whatever power was keeping the wyvern animated was beginning to lose its fight against the body’s state of decay. As Alucard watched, something glimmered in the creature’s hollow eye sockets, a lurid pink glow that seemed to emanate from deep within the skull. 

So _that’s_ what was keeping this pitiful corpse upright. The wolf bristled and paced, taking care to keep between Belmont and the monster. The wyvern wasn’t his real target. 

With the hole in the ether still repairing itself, his stronger spells were off-limits. There wasn't resource available to summon a familiar or launch a remote attack. Alucard considered shadow-stepping directly to the corpse instead. Given the state of it, the dhampir was optimistic he could punch right through that mushy skull and into the heart of the wyvern’s hijacker. But he was uncertain what sort of throes the body might go into when severed from its re-animator, and to land such a blow he would have to leave the Hunter unguarded. Who, the dhampir was trying not to dwell on yet was keenly aware of, hadn’t been moving much since the wyvern’s attack. 

The wyvern’s corpse finally dragged itself upright, the pink glow pulsing stronger in the holes where its eyes had once been. The skull swayed precariously above the wolf’s head, its bones rattling and clicking loosely together like a child’s battered doll. Alucard felt sorry for it. It must have been a proud, fearsome beast when alive. Death had been cruel to it, striking it from the sky and down to the lowest place of earth to serve in pitiful condition as a home for curses and worms. Alucard wondered how much time had passed since the ectoplasm had possessed the body, and if the wyvern had already been dead when the ghosts took over. 

The head lashed forward once more and the wolf lunged as well. Alucard threw himself into meeting the attack directly. The wyvern’s corpse was larger but the wolf was faster, and not without bulk of its own. He reached the monster’s throat before the head could bite and latched on, the long fangs sinking through putrid meat and down to the bone. It gave a wet crunch under the wolf’s jaws. The dhampir used the momentum to pull the creature off its feet, dragging its body down on himself but more importantly, dragging it away from Belmont. 

It was horrible. The wyvern’s bloated form seemed to burst against him, leaking into his fur and into his nose. He could hear the frenzied writhing of worms that nested deep in the rotting body. For a heart beat, Alucard was back in the sewer with its liquefied pool of decayed flesh, the human remains and the sewer muck no longer distinguishable from each other, and the feeling of disgust strong was enough to paralyze. He pulled together all the scraps of available mana he could reach and, with great effort, managed to focus his mind away from the wyvern long enough to teleport out from beneath it. 

It was still struggling in the dirt as the wolf approached its head once more, breath hissing through the animal’s clenched jaws. The scant energy in the area left the dhampir feeling drained from only that minor spell work, but he wouldn’t need magic for the killing stroke. With the body down, the head would be easy to remove. 

The corpse’s movements were weak but the light from its empty eyes was stronger than ever, intensifying to a deep hateful red as the white wolf drew close. It pulsed from red to a sickly green and then back again, flaring in a frantic, garish light. 

Alucard’s guess had been correct: Decay had left the wyvern’s skull fragile. It caved easily beneath a punishing stomp from the wolf’s large paws. 

A wail hissed out of the cracked skull, disturbingly human in tone. It sounded to the dhampir somehow both furious and deeply remorseful. A strip of hair raised along the wolf’s back as it listened, ears swiveling, unsettled. Luminous pink jelly dribbled between the soggy shards of skull. Contrary to his fears, the body didn’t even so much as twitch after the ectoplasm was snuffed out. It simply lay where it fell and leaked into the scorched ground of the crater. It was a silly notion--the thing was merely a corpse--but Alucard somehow had an impression the wyvern was relieved to be put out of its misery. 

The wolf looked down at the heap of skull beneath its paws. Alucard had heard tales of such possessions happening before, out in the most ravaged and war-torn parts of the country. Widespread, violent death tended to spawn a lot of restless ghosts. Angry spirits in turn banded together to become unified entities, monsters known as an ectoplasm, adept at using psychic curses to bring down their victims. In rare instances a particularly hateful glob could grow in strength until it became a poltergeist capable of affecting physical matter. They could even posses a body, assuming the host was sufficiently weakened. They were dangerous to the living when left at large, and the wolf was wary of lingering traces of the ectoplasm’s power. 

But the cry from the skull had tapered off, the pink light of the coagulated goo growing dim. In the end, despite all its malevolent psychic power, the ectoplasm was still as frail as the humans it once had been. 

It was silent once more save for the wolf’s panting breaths and the crackle of cinders from the burning fringe of grass. The white beast backed off from the body, finally satisfied that the danger had been snuffed out. Its snowy coat had been stained with filth from the fight, mud and gunk caking the white fur. The exertion had been strangely taxing for such a brief encounter. The wolf closed its golden eyes with a very good canine approximation of a sigh. Then it turned to glare at the man still lying on the other side of the crater, crumpled in a grimy heap on his side. 

Seven months. 

It had been seven months since Trevor Belmont had taken his departure from the ruins of his home, leaving the dhampir behind to stand guard. 

It made sense. _Someone_ needed to stay to guard the castle and the hold, and it was clear the two humans were eager to spend some time living as regular people. Alucard did not begrudge it. If anyone deserved such a luxury as normal life, it was the two who had fought so hard to preserve it for everyone else. Especially Belmont himself, though Alucard would never admit it. The man had been fighting a war long before Dracula ever started one. But there wasn’t much place for a half-vampire in that life of human normalcy. The lines of division between who would be going and who would be staying had drawn themselves before a formal decision was ever made. 

Alucard couldn’t deny that it made sense, the way things had turned out. But that hadn’t made him feel much better about it. 

There had been no one to talk to. Not for months. Nothing around to distract him from his grief and guilt, other than the libraries and the dangerous task of clearing out the gruesome traps and strange monuments littered throughout the castle by Dracula in his final year. Which was an especially depressing endeavor, seeing as it entailed facing the physical manifestations of his once-brilliant father’s insanity. Halls lined with dozens of broken clock towers, ominous floating eyes that followed movements through the gardens, gladiator pits hidden beneath living quarters: Alucard was still sounding the castle for these bizarre and dangerous pockets of madness. 

He heard from Belmont and Lady Belnades only occasionally. Every now and again an ethereal familiar would arrive at Demon Castle accompanied by a note of rolled parchment. The Speaker’s impeccable print would provide him with latest news and rumors from abroad, assuring him they were well and doing their part to lend aid to the human cities. The letters always ended fondly, with Sypha’s heartfelt wishes for his own well-being. 

It was thoughtful, and Alucard certainly appreciated the news, but it was frustrating too. The letters were mostly a one-way channel of communication. Because the humans stayed on the move, he rarely knew where to address a reply. It was like receiving notes in a bottle. A letter may arrive on his shore, but any attempt to respond could only be cast blindly back into the sea. With his parents dead and teammates gone and even the forest abandoned by everything except the carrion flock, the dhampir had begun to feel as though he were stranded on an island. One that was beginning to sink. 

It had been a few weeks after the war when Alucard had first realized he actually missed the Hunter. It was ridiculous. The man was an incorrigible troublemaker, and he smelled bad. As a member of the Belmonts, the two of them were natural enemies: A vampire, and a killer of vampires. But he was also the only person Alucard knew who might have understood the devastation the dhampir felt in the wake of his _entire family’s_ violent death. They had faced Dracula’s armies together and guarded each others’ backs and lived to nitpick each other over it. They didn’t like each other, but they had chosen to stand on the same side. 

And then the Hunter had left, and stayed gone. Sypha’s notes always mentioned him so Alucard knew he was fine, but Belmont never reached out to his former comrade himself. Not one word, in half a year. 

For a while Alucard had felt foolish and embarrassed for even noticing. It’s not like he expected anything from the Hunter. They had no further obligation to each other after their purpose had been fulfilled. And Belmont was always going to be something of a bastard. It’s just that Alucard had also thought he and the Hunter might have become friends too, sort of. At least in their own way. It had stung to realize the dhampir had ventured out onto that limb alone. Of course, after enough time had passed, the sense of hurt did lose its edge. It became just another stitch in the dull, colorless shroud that settled over his days. Fine. It was fine. 

That Belmont would show up again after so long without a single warning, dragging the reanimated corpse of a small dragon along with him and making it Alucard’s problem, was bullshit. Even if this was his old family home. 

The wolf’s stare was withering as it eyed the man. It was clear the Hunter had been in close quarters with the wyvern. The man’s tunic was ripped and stained in the same muck that fouled the wolf’s fur. Bruises and abrasions marred his face and arms. He looked like he'd been having quite the shit kicked out of him before landing on the Hold's ruined doorstep.

There was something clenched in the man’s left hand. Alucard recognized the crumpled remains of a small white scroll. Instinctively the wolf took a step back. It was not much different than ordinary paper now, but Alucard could still sense the lingering trace of power it had once contained before its spell had been evoked. Sypha must have been behind it. The Hunter had no magical talent. Certainly not enough to puzzle out such a powerful artifact as a teleportation scroll on his own.

Except, where was the Speaker? Alucard couldn’t imagine that she would willingly part from the Hunter, but somehow Belmont had ended up here on his own. Which was also strange considering the old Belmont estate offered no tactical advantage or defense. Not after what the mob had done to it all those decades ago. 

Well, perhaps Belmont had mixed up his words for ‘home’ in the spell’s incantation and ended up with something more literal than he had been intending. How inconvenient for him. 

One of the wolf’s ears flicked back as the Hunter twitched, groaning slightly into the dirt. 

The animal snorted, anticipating the man’s inevitable whinging, sure to start up mere moments after awakening. Whatever damage the human had suffered, he surely deserved it. Alucard had never known Belmont to pick up trouble he hadn’t already earned. 

But even the anger and resentment of half a year of loneliness was hard to maintain when Belmont did not wake. They were upwind of the corpse and the wolf was beginning to pick out a few smells other than purification. One of them was blood, coming from somewhere on the Hunter, though he could see no wound. Then he realized it was coming from below the man’s head, where his right temple rested on the ground. 

There was still too little mana in the area for the dhampir to shapeshift so he remained a wolf, nudging at the Hunter with first his snout and then his paws until he had him rolled off his side and onto his back. With relief, the wolf saw that the blood was only from a cut above his ear. It was bleeding a respectable amount--and likely infectious enough to cause necrosis if it came from the wyvern’s claws, thought Alucard dryly--but it was better than seeing an impact wound. Even his mother’s medical expertise wouldn’t have been enough to repair a cracked skull. 

By the way the man’s hair was gunked together in drying blood, he had taken the hit before activating the teleportation spell. Belmont winced at the wolf’s breath against the wound as Alucard inspected the injury, recoiling from the contact, though his eyes remaining tightly shut.

It was good he wasn’t down from a cracked head, but that presented additional mystery. Belmont looked battered and bruised, and had bled out a bit, but none of that should be enough to keep the fighter knocked out for long. The man was among the most resilient alive. He’d have to be, to survive being himself for this long. That he was lying comatose with no visible serious injury was an alarming sign. 

The wolf’s paws grew insistent as they scraped at the man. 

_Come on, you idiot, open your eyes_ , the dhampir willed at him, the wolf being unable to plead out loud. _You have to open your eyes and get up._

But the Hunter did not move. 

Alucard looked north, the wolf’s golden eyes seeking Castlevania where it stood in dark silhouette against the sky. The entrance was some few hundred meters away. He couldn’t carry Belmont like this. Perhaps he could drag him? There was medicine and curse removals stored in the alchemy lab. At present rate, the quickest way to get it to the Hunter would be for the wolf to leave him and retrieve it from the castle, but Alucard was reluctant to leave Belmont alone. 

For one horrible moment, Alucard was overwhelmed by the despair of the circumstances as he stood over the fallen man. The night was growing cold again as the fire from the burning grass snuffed out, the last of the orange glow fading into darkness. Belmont’s pulse was weak, his face pale even for a man drenched in moonlight. There was help to be had in the castle, but Alucard couldn’t fucking get him there. 

It was because he was so despaired that the dhampir failed to notice the Hunter stirring beneath him. And it was because the Hunter was a friend that Alucard was standing without guard when the man pulled a long blade from a hidden sheath among his sleeve and buried it to the hilt between the wolf’s ribs.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> in this fic we ignore canonical magic rules from the game for plot convenience.


End file.
